The Eyes Have It

Along with the new year comes the Twilight Zone marathon.  I dipped into a few, including one of the most famous--"Eye Of The Beholder." You know the one--where the woman is getting surgery to fix her horrendous ugliness.  They take off the bandages and she--played by Donna Douglas, best known as Elly May Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies--is beautiful, except in this world where she's ugly because everyone else looks like pigs.

Get it?  Beauty is determined by internal standards, not external looks. What's normal is what counts, and conformity can be too highly prized (a great fear around 1960--not so much any more).  The woman with the failed surgery would like to die, but gets sent away to a place where other "ugly" people--including this hunky guy introduced to her--live. (Whenever I see this episode I can't help but think of the Saturday Night Live parody with Pamela Anderson, where even the pig-faces recognize she's hot.)

Aside from the awkward way its shot so you can't see anyone's faces till the end, and the way they beat you over the head with the message, there was something else I noticed--just how incredibly crappy are these surgeons?  This is the lady's eleventh treatment!  What are they doing?  When they take the bandages off, the doctor announces there's been no change.  Shouldn't there at least be some scars, some ridges?  Did they implant yeast hoping it would rise or something?  This planet where the pig-faces live has odd ideas about beauty by our standards, and is far behind in cosmetic surgery by any standards.